1. Technical Field
The present disclosure generally relates to mobile devices. More specifically, the present disclosure relates to transferring software applications between mobile devices that have different operating systems.
2. Description of the Related Art
Mobile electronic devices such as mobile phones are extremely popular and enjoy wide spread acceptance in our society. Users are able to load various software applications on their mobile devices to enable a wide variety of functions and uses. For example, a social website software application or a weather software application can be downloaded from a server to a mobile device. Each of the software applications is designed to run or execute on a specific operating system that is associated with the mobile device. In addition, mobile devices are used by the operator to store various types of data such as phone numbers, addresses, music and photos.
There are several manufactures of mobile devices and several manufacturers of operating system. Each mobile device is designed to use a specific operating system (OS). A software application designed to run on a first operating system is typically not capable of running on a second different operating system. If a mobile device user decides to switch from one mobile device to another with a different operating system, the user must manually reload all of the software applications and associated data available on their old mobile device to the new mobile device. This procedure is difficult and time consuming. Most applications require a complete download from the application server of the correct version of the application for the new OS. The user therefore has to retrieve a list of applications from the previous device and manually search for a corresponding application to download to the new device. It is desirable to improve the process for a user switching from a current mobile device to another mobile device with a different operating system.